


The Phantom of a Touch

by lenasorensen



Category: GOT7
Genre: A little angst, Fluff, M/M, it’s all because of miracle, it’s so warm, markjin is warm, the others are kinda there as well
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-13
Updated: 2018-12-13
Packaged: 2019-09-17 13:46:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16975719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lenasorensen/pseuds/lenasorensen
Summary: In his time of need, Mark is always here for Jinyoung.





	The Phantom of a Touch

**Author's Note:**

> i don’t usually write one shots this short without some kind of plot, but miracle vibes, y’all 
> 
> i do not own got7
> 
> enjoy !

Who could he talk about it to?  
  
That he wasn’t doing okay; that sometimes, an unruly gush of pressure pushed the wind out of his lungs and spilled tears through his eyes.

 

That sometimes, the emptiness within him was so wide that even his customarily healing thoughts weren’t enough to sew the parts of himself together.

 

That most of the time, the reasons behind these conflicts were sourceless and Jinyoung found himself so devastated and hollow from the trample of sadness that he couldn’t bother picking every shreds of him up anymore.

  
  
He had already suffered a series of markedly unlucky events that had the opposite effect of optimism: his grades dramatically dropped, his skin was beginning to flake at the sudden onslaught of the freezing weather, his friends kept secrets from him, those secrets most probably being about him.

 

However, it wasn’t the results of those events that got him in a whirlpool of crippling misery.

 

Rather, it was that those results didn’t quite meet the absurd amount of efforts he poured to make his life a little easier. He ducked behind books days before the exam only to see that it hardly sufficed. He dunked his face in an allegedly promising moisturizing product only to see deceiving results. He confronted his friends, but you get the drill: it didn’t work.

 

Some nights he hadn’t been able to sleep with some sort of fear keeping him in an intact state of awakeness, the worst being that he had yet to know where they stemmed from.

  
  
Jinyoung hated being alone, left on his own in his cold sheets and swimming in the darkness as to numb down his eyes that were starting to sting.

 

It was his most dreaded moment of the day: those awfully long minutes before falling asleep, when his mind would be most crowded by whatever felt comfortable fleeting through. It could be tomorrow’s test or the appalling apprehension of someone’s death.

  
  
He was so tired with just about everything and even as a fairly optimistic person who tended not to pull a sad face when a situation got particularly difficult, the swelling wound tearing him in half had eventually become too painful to withstand on his own.

 

He remembered falling from his bicycle at twelve years old and had gotten a very ugly bruise on his knee in the following days, but he had been too scared to receive his mother’s reprimands to let her properly treat him. And what did twelve-year-old Jinyoung really know about infections? Stubbornness might be Jinyoung’s strongest characteristic, but perhaps in that situation, it had only served to punish him. By the time the bruise had soared to a point where it was rather serious, Jinyoung realized he couldn’t actually stand the pain like he thought he would be able to. His mother had to step in with a worried frown over her face, much like when Mark would send nervous glances in Jinyoung’s general direction as if he were a sheet of paper hanging in a storm in the middle of the ocean.

  
  
Perhaps, Mark understood, had heard Jinyoung spiral down his misery somehow, had felt the acute pang ringing in his ears when he’d hit rock bottom.

  
  
But they never came around to talk about it.

  
  
Who could Jinyoung talk about it to?

  
  
Jackson was the number one crossed out option. He liked to pick on him and his most subtle weaknesses, pulled the jokes off as effortlessly as he breathed; like telling him he looked particularly like a sick elf this evening or that his christmas sweater looked like the incarnation of his most horrendous nightmare. And although Jinyoung knew it was all in good-nature and mostly just mindless teasing, he had lost faith that Jackson would ever really take him seriously.

  
  
Jaebum was his hyung. Jinyoung could ask him anything as long as he was being polite and respectful, be it to teach him calculus or give him reviews about his singing performances. But as far as their friendship went, that was all there was to it. Jaebum wasn’t a person fit to find solutions to Jinyoung’s problems, and even if Jinyoung never expected that in the first place, something told him it would already be difficult for Jaebum to bare his ears and listen to him.

  
  
He was close to Yugyeom; so close that Jinyoung was afraid of telling him one too many things about himself that would crush Yugyeom’s will to listen anymore. There was a reciprocity that lacked somewhere anyway, damaging the balance and the equivocality. And although it was already established between them that Jinyoung couldn’t take as much from him as he’d given, the feeling of being cared for just wasn’t present enough to make him feel valued. Like whether or not he was there scantly mattered to Yugyeom, like it wouldn’t mark a great difference. So Jinyoung talked about himself in the most superfluous way possible without being shallow, which he guessed had driven Yugyeom to some sort of edge where merely listening to him had become a chore he had to execute.

  
  
Mark just didn’t seem to understand, to utter the right words. He just leaned in a fraction closer like pity had taken an unyielding hold upon him and patted him on the back.

 

So who could Jinyoung talk about it to?

  
  
The only difference, he thought, was that even if Mark wasn’t capable of lending an ear and nurtured a sort of pity that seemed almost disconcerting to Jinyoung, he was willing to understand.

  
  
When Jinyoung told him that cold fear relentlessly seized him at night for a reason or another, Mark had held him tight into his embrace and had stroked his hair like he was a baby, whispered that Jinyoung didn’t need to be frightened about anything.

 

Regardless of how cheesy and unrealistic Mark was being, acting like his knight in shining armor, Jinyoung found that the endeavor was already enough to fend off the darkness saturating his shriveled excuse of a heart (and Jinyoung ended up sounding the most cheesy between them after all).

  
  
When Jinyoung told him that he was sad, that he did his best to study and failed nonetheless, Mark had helped him remember the awful lot of dates written in his history books, albeit knowing less than Jinyoung. It ended up in a catastrophe of Mark and Jinyoung playing Overwatch against each other, but the dates were still there, swimming in his mind under Mark’s registered voice.

  
  
When Jinyoung told him that he felt insecure about himself, Mark had taken him shopping.

  
  
When Jinyoung told him that he had trouble sleeping at night, he found Mark at his door the same night with a bunch of comics bunched in his arms and a pair of happy eyes.

 

He still struggled to sleep when Mark pressed up against him and kept him warm, but Jinyoung found slumber as easily as Mark’s fingers carding through his hair.

  
  
When Jinyoung told Mark that he was offering too much and that he wouldn’t be able to repay half of the things he did, Mark had rolled his eyes and placed the softest kiss on Jinyoung’s lips.

  
  
“You give me a lot of _those_ for the next years and I’ll be as good as content.”

  
  
“What? The kisses? You consider this evening the score?” Jinyoung had raised his arms and wrapped them around Mark’s neck.

 

Deep inside, he had trouble expressing how grateful he was, had had for the entire time Mark had spent putting up  and  taking care of him.

 

So he did the easiest thing that had flared up the forefront of his mind, most probably what Mark would have loved as well, and kissed him on the lips again.

  
  
“It doesn’t have to be a promise, but this is what makes me happy.”

  
  
With the efforts Mark poured into rendering him a more stable human being, with all the times Jinyoung’s exterior had been stripped until his flaws were open to Mark’s scrutiny, Jinyoung’s near-constant dismay that had been looming over his head slowly began to dissipate, worn and useless and almost nonexistent.

  
  
He realized, though, that love wasn’t all about Jinyoung. It was also about a special form of reciprocity. Not the kind that was fickle like with Yugyeom, but one where the telltale traces of smiles and the fading echoes of cries reflected the crescent of their love. It was something that was meant to be shared and perhaps treasured fondly in one’s heart.

  
  
And so when it was time, Mark had cried into his shoulder, had clutched onto his shirt like the whole world was falling apart, had told Jinyoung a thousand stories about his inexplicable qualms.

 

And when it was time, Jinyoung had wholeheartedly placed Mark beside him and had consoled the distress away from him, had held him tight no matter what monster Mark thought himself to be when he’d almost drove over a cat, watched Mark perform with distinct awe and encouraging him on when he thought he was definitely falling behind in his martial arts tricking. Jinyoung had taken upon himself to run an extra mile for Mark, and he was happy to comply.

  
  
Who knew something so beautiful could have grown within something so vapid and bitter?

 

All they needed was a tiny phantom of a touch, a place of comfort.

**Author's Note:**

> because markjin chemistry is like nothing else that i’ve seen before and i love them dearly
> 
> happy holiday to everyone, rest well !!
> 
> i hope you enjoyed !


End file.
